Birds

With the world locked in ice, and covered by about a foot of snow so powdery and fluffy that it looks and feels fake (not to mention slippery) there is little to be seen outdoors. Nothing but unrelieved white, punctuated only by the grey of the trees and an occasional flash of vague color from a salt encrusted car down on the Thruway. This season is when the birds really come into their own as points of interest. (Of course we watch them all year, but now they are the only show in town.)

Day before yesterday I trudged through the drifts up to the orchard to get some dried apple wood to boost the lame, wet-wood fire that was supposed to be warming us. (HAH) Over the river a large raptor soared, spot-lighted by the brilliant sun just showing over the southern horizon (she ain't so very high in the sky these days.) It flashed past, simply glowing, white-black, white-black as its wings slowly pumped the wind. It was probably nothing more than the hungry red tail that hangs around all year, but it looked like an ancient dragon patrolling up the small breadth of still-open water.

Yesterday I went out on one of my perpetual motion trips to the stove just int time to just miss seeing the Cooper's hawk, just missing a pigeon. She huffed and puffed on the barn ridgepole snapping her elegant wings open and shut in irritation when it scooted under the eaves and into the barn (I have seen her duck in through the open window after one now and then, but she didn't yesterday). She is so respected by the neighborhood flying rats, that not one pigeon landed on the heifer barn roof for the rest of the day (they sat on the house instead, darn 'em.)

Same day, feeding the birds. When I walked toward the swing set where the feeders hang I didn't see a one. However a veritable cloud of juncos, gold finches, chickadees, white-throated sparrows, Sassenachs, mourning doves, blue jays, tufted titmice, and who knows what all else, flew out of the old Christmas tree. Alan put it up so some of the feeders hang among the branches. The birds seem to love the shelter, and I am kind of fond of it too. I can just lean back here at the computer, twitch open the edge of the curtain, and peer right into the center of it. (Voyeurism of the best sort.)

On the not so happy with the birds front, crows and mallard ducks are marauding the ag bags to pick out corn. I am perfectly happy to provide fifty odd pounds of black oil sunflower seeds over the course of the winter. It keeps the birds happy with me and I with them.

Hundreds of tons of corn from our winter cattle feed being ruined is another story. Ducks can spread salmonella to cows when they leave droppings in feed. We chase them away whenever we see them. I don't feel too sorry for them either. They have a whole darned river to forage in, plus plenty of corn left on the ground in more open places where the wind has blown the snow away. I used to take Mike up to herd them out of the bags, (which was a lot of fun and pretty near as effective as the Cooper's on the pigeons). The first day I tried it, it was stormy and when we got to the bag fifty or sixty turkeys, maybe two hundred mallards, and crows and starlings too numerous to count flew up in a tornado of black and brown in front of us. My intrepid dog, who thought nothing of grabbing a bull by the nose and hanging off until the bovine reprobate changed his mind about where he was going, was terrified by the uproar from the birds and almost quit me for the house!

*** I ain't not supportin' nobody yet, but have you noticed the photos on the front page of all the papers of the winners of the Iowa caucuses? Gigantic color shots of Obama...itty bitty snaps of Huckabee, or nothing at all. Hmmm, any favoritism on the part of the media? Nah, couldn't be, they are merely unbiased reporters of history in the making.

A Pure Florida antidote to this gripping cold

Arrived in today's mail. It consisted of pine fatwood that Florida Cracker, writer of the amazing blog, Pure Florida, was kind enough to hunt down in his woods, cut up, split, and ship to the frozen north.

This is the container.....

The minute my knife breached the paper covering an incredible pineyness filled the dining room. (Liz wants to save a piece just to sniff.) I wish you could smell it too.

Essence of Pure Florida (Thanks, FC)

I am going to save this wonderful stuff until I need to build a new fire. (FC says half a piece will start a fire with dry wood.)

***Well, maybe I will take just a little sliver out to see what it does.... it is awfully tempting. For now I am just letting the open container sit on the dining room table. You see.... my computer is in the dining room and I love the smell of the pine woods....

Brrr

This is a completely unadulterated picture of the ice on the windows

This is another

This is another picture of a happy person with a Christmas present

Looking for something to put in the coffee

(Besides sugar and milk that is. It is so cold that anything that might add warmth would be welcome.) Yesterday afternoon you could feel it coming in. The cold I mean. Bone chilling, heart stopping, rottennasty, miserable cold. I moved the tender house plants in the parlor away from the windows and grouped them around the heat register and piled blankets, old coats, pillows, and anything else I could find against the windows. It may look dumb, but it works...sort of. (This house was built for summer and I don't want to staple plastic to the golden oak, hand carved woodwork, so when the north wind blows...brrrrr.)

Alan and I taped the kitchen door shut, like Grandma Peggy used to do. It made a big difference too, as did the heavy cloth objects piled against the bottom of all the doors. Extra blankets on every bed. 3 liter soda bottles filled with extremely hot water tucked in every bed before milking. Then they will be semi, sorta, kinda warm when we get in em. The boss fired up the oil furnace to supplement the wood, but it smells so bad that everyone begged him to shut it off. The wood furnace is mostly keeping up, and it is not too bad this morning. If you wear enough clothes that is. I really should go out and throw in some wood, but I am honestly afraid of falling out there in the dark before anyone gets up to miss me. It is really icy.

When the sun comes up I will get you some pictures of the amazing ice on the living room windows. It glitters right now in the light from the office like Christmas lights and fireplaces and things that are warm...which it isn't. Meanwhile here are a couple quick shots I got of the really wonderful Christmas presents a certain pair of someones gave us.




Note the shirt with farm name, cow and person's name...we have wanted to get show shirts so we all look smart at the cow shows for years. Now we all have 'em. Note the board game, Farmopoly. This game started as soon as Alan got out of school and continued until bedtime (with a couple of intervals for chores and milking). The rules kept bending until it sounded more like a casino in here than a version of monopoly for farmers, but they sure had a great time. There are some other pretty special things as well, including the coolest tractor pulling video I have ever seen. I generally don't watch TV, but I was glued to it when the guys watched it the other day. Made by a local guy and he is GOOD
.



And, no, Becky has not been hitting the stuff I want for the coffee. She was just telling me that if a picture of her showed up on the Internet I was in trouble. (Oops)

The little chickadee in the top photo is enjoying our Christmas tree, which migrated outdoors on Tuesday. The wild birds love it! There were birds in it before Alan even got back indoors from tying it to the swing set where I feed them. Now they huddle under it and skip around through the branches just as if it grew there. Nice

Links

Here are a couple of links for your head scratching puzzlement. One is about offering a day off for cows. Believe it or not, a pasta company has put calcium in their macaroni so cows can have a day off. What a thought...time off for cattle. They even have a bovine sellout...er, ....spokes "person" thanking them for their "generosity".

The knotheads!

If you give cows a day off from milking their udders rapidly fill with excess milk, to the point of extreme pain. They bellow and scream to be milked and thrash and bang their stanchions. If left more than a few extra hours without milking, they can develop painful udder infections, from which some could die. We dairy farmers don't milk every twelve hours because we are super Vikings or like being perpetually tired or anything masochistic like that. We do it because it is necessary for the cows' comfort and health.

Milking machine equipment repair companies are available on a 24-hour emergency basis (they don't come cheap, but they do come when called) and most farmers own generators so if the power goes out the work goes on. As far as the Northview cows are concerned, thanks but no thanks Ronzoni, we will get our calcium from milk and continue to work every day as always.
Mooove along with your silly, selfish, city-centric ad campaign.

And this is a bit sad, but had me scratching my head; Elderly man hurt riding pet buffalo. That simply doesn't need any explanation...the headline says it all.

I am working on a post on some incredibly cool Christmas presents we received from someone who seems to know us better than we know ourselves. However back-to-back, big, bad snowstorms have put everybody into overdrive just getting chores done and when we come in we all seem to fall asleep in our chairs....but soon...

Happy New Year to All

Off to the barn, more later.....

Adventures in bull fighting

Today we loaded Promise for a one way trip to Dependabul to be drawn. From there he will be sold.

He didn't want to go. Luckily no one was hurt, but I do not EVER want to do that again. No more bulls, no way, no how. No thank you.

Peace

After a whole week of frantic housecleaning and barn cleaning and running around doing errands it is finally Sunday morning. My morning off, the one milking all week wherein I don't..milk that is. I still need to mop the kitchen floor (no point in doing it until the last minute as we have no mud room, but we do have mud -and worse-tracked in continuously). So I am spending my lovely, sweet, peaceful morning off skipping around reading all your blogs, which I have missed all week (it is good to catch up) and listening to shotguns going off. Again. Today they started half an hour before daylight. Weird and disturbing, but I am not going to let it intrude on my peace.

I hope your morning is peaceful as well.

This raises the hair right up on the back of my neck

Coyotes in Erie Colorado came right into a backyard and grabbed little dogs (with intent to gobble) and bit their owner. That is way too tame for me! We have a LOT of these around this year, but they meet a little different welcome than banging pots and pans and yelling.

HT to A Coyote at the Dog Show (who has a lot of other good stuff up right now, so head on over if you have a minute).

Crazy day

It started out as ordinary enough though. We milked the cows and fed the calves and the boss cleaned the stables. Then while we were working we began hearing gunfire all around us. The boss went outside to look, but thought it was across the river.

We decided to move some calves outside before we went in to eat. Big rodeo. They had not been led for the most part and jumped all over Liz and tried to run over the rest of us and leap through the gates and generally gave us a rough time. Heard more shooting, this time up behind the house. Went in for breakfast. Heard still more shooting. Boom, boom, boom..clearly a shot gun,...glad I am not buying their shells as there had so far been at least 20 shots.

Suddenly I heard a LOT of shooting and it sounded like it was right over in the cow pasture. The boss, Liz and I took off right away as we had put the springing heifers out there while we moved calves. By the time my slow, old self got up there (visions of all kind of bad possibilities dancing in my head) the young stock were coming back up from where they had bolted down to the barn gate. We never did find out who was out there or even just where they were, but after we went out the shooting at least stopped. I found one of the heifers hiding by the big tree in the upper photo and thought it looked kind of interesting.

Spooked but interested in what I was up to.

Soooo.....we went back in to try to finish our breakfast. While we were inside the corn meal that was delayed by yesterday's storm was finally delivered. Then a fellow that is interested in buying some semen from the shorthorn bull when we draw him arrived unexpectedly to look at him and check out his daughters. Guess he liked him because he wants to buy some when we get it back.

I had to kind of hustle him along as we had a big day of cleaning mangers planned. I felt bad about it, but my help was needed. It was a major task as we have been behind since the boss got hurt. We mostly got it done anyhow and the guys built a real nice feeder for the calf pen where we put the ones we moved. Cows got fed pretty late, which made milking a bit late too, but we were still back in the house by just after eight. I had cooked a roast and some potatoes and carrots and everything was ready when we came in, for which I was grateful as I was just plain ready to be done. It was about as busy a day as we have had in a while and I sure would like to know what was going on with all the shooting, but we got a lot done so I won't complain....doesn't pay anyhow. Now I am going to go take a shower so I don't smell like bad feed and cow manure and get all rested up for tomorrow's dose of fun on the farm.

Running errands yesterday

Was really not much fun

Ducks liked it though

Really cool Christmas gifts

Really lousy photographs

Hawk Video

Name the hawk

So full of pigeon that it didn't want to fly. Video later.
Photos by Liz, who has a better camera

I got out of milking early yesterday

To cook dinner. The chicken came from a local farmer, (and lucky me, I have four more).....it was cooked in a turkey bag with lots of carrots, potatoes, an onion and a couple cloves of garlic I grew last summer. Oh, and a dash of Mrs. Dash and a sprinkle of Italian herbs.


And if you have chicken, then you must, of course, have a big bowl of dressing. This was made with all the little odds and ends of stale bread left in the bottom of bread bags. There was an amazing number of them with the kids all home. Usually the doggies get them for a little treat or they go over to the pigs, but this time they found better use....plus I added a whole loaf of oat nut bread, since that was all we had. Interesting texture using that instead of white. Lots of crunchy little oats in there. Also of course, six large onions and most of a head of celery sauteed in butter and seasoned with Morton's Sausage seasoning. We bought several jars of that about ten years ago to flavor some sausage...then the butcher used his own instead so we ended up using it all these years for stuffing...which worked out quite well, since we changed to a butcher we like a lot better and we love the sausage seasoning for our stuffing.

I hope that like us you have lots of leftovers so you can make interesting things like chicken pot pie...

To each and all of you

Odd sky

What we saw

Yesterday was simply fantastic for bird counting, what with it being a warm day with a big storm predicted for today. The birds knew bad weather is coming and they were out in droves.The only downside was hideous holiday traffic, with at least one serious car accident that we passed. Before my counting partner had even arrived I walked out behind my parents' house to count the mourning doves, blue jays and gold finches that were just waking up there. The binoculars I trained on the Norway spruces that line the boundary between their yard and the neighbor's picked out a brown lump that clearly wasn't a mourning dove. It was plainly a small hawk, who obligingly gave me a good look at her tail before flying away, indignant at being driven out of her sunning spot-she was a sharp shinned hawk.

We also saw several red tails and a kestrel, neither uncommon, but often hard to track down on count day. During our first four roads we saw a large flock of snow buntings, (actually in a field less than half a mile from the folk's house) a flock of well over 95 crows, although they moved too much for Alan to count any higher for sure, some turkeys (just yards down the road from the snow buntings). (Not to mention lots of other birds.)

As time went on, pretty near all the normal species were represented, chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches, woodpeckers, both downy and pileated (although not a single hairy this year) one grackle, which seems an unlikely critter for this season, but I saw a cowbird just last week, so I guess not all the black birds have migrated, lots of blue jays, tree sparrows, hoards of starlings, rock doves (which are pigeons all the rest of the year) a handful of house sparrows, one house finch, etc. etc. Oh, and mallard ducks, Canada geese and a bunch of small, brown fast fliers that were probably teal, but too far away to be positive.

Then perhaps an hour and a half into the count I saw a very bright, white, something that was not a lump of snow in a snowy tree right behind a house in our territory. We stopped the car, because it just looked like "something". It was hawk-shaped, but glaringly the wrong color. I could not believe my eyes when I trained my binoculars on it. It was a snowy owl, all tucked up among the bunches of snow piled on some oak leaves that still clung to the branches. It was a treat for my brother, niece Tawny and Alan who had never seen one before. We sat quite a while watching it and went back in the afternoon to try for a photo, but alas it was gone. However, a great blue heron flapped slowly by just down the road and gave my young nephew, Kegan, his first big "ooh ahh" bird of his counting history.

All in all I think everybody had a lot of fun. It was great to have Alan and Tawny, both 17, show themselves to have learned to be great bird spotters over the years. It takes a few years for the kids to learn to pick out roosting hawks and distant turkeys from among the brown and tangled trees and bushes that line the roadsides, but these two really have "the eye" now. Tawny picked out one of our red tails from a grapevine-draped elm tree in a small woods, where I certainly never would have spotted it. On the downside, I had to drive for a while for the first time, having always been a spotter in the past. My poor brother worked all night, then drove home and came to the count. He reached his limit in late morning so the boys and I did the afternoon. Spotting is a blast, like treasure hunting in the sky. Driving, especially three days before Christmas is ugly! People don't like folks who drive slowly with their flashers on, staring at trees. They express their displeasure...trust me. I have a new appreciation for my dad, my next younger brother, and my baby brother, who have served as drivers over the years (baby brother is doing it these days). It is hard and thankless and a lot less fun than being the one staring into the tree and hollering out, "Stop, it's an ooh ahh bird!"

Gone today

Off to participate in the annual Audubon Christmas bird count, hoping for ooh, ahh, birds!
Best wishes to you all.

Here is a much nicer animal story

Family adopts son's partner

Monks harassed into getting rid of chickens

I hope PeTA is proud to have driven a group of Trappist Monks into getting rid of their chickens by relentlessly harassing them about their egg business. The monks say that they couldn't continue their lives of quiet contemplation while being pestered by these pestilential pests. Talk about cruelty! Taking away these men's livelihood just to make news headlines seems pretty darned cruel to me. Their capitulation must have been frosting on the activist's nasty cake. Those folks will rejoice when all domestic animals are dead, as they view them as unnatural exploited abominations. (You hear that Mikie? Nick? Gael? You unnatural hounds you). Pretending to care about comfort for farm animals is just that-pretending. Complete and total animal liberation is the animal rights goal and that includes dogs and cats, right along with chickens and pigs.

Old Crow

Old Crow, black oarsman in the sky, winging west from the hawk party in the orchard (you had him right on the ground under the biggest apple tree today, you dark marauder, you).

Fluff of mourning doves, half a dozen, soft as the snow flakes piled on twig and fence bars, blurring the roof lines on the barns.

Jingle bell tree sparrows chiming through burdocks, over box elders, and around the corn crib, then flitting down behind the silo.

Tuxedo junco, flickering white tie and tails at the banquet under the bushes.

Plinking downies, whistling cardinal, Sam Peabody whitethroat...it is a beautiful bird morning in this Christmas postcard world.

The gift that keeps on giving

Joni pointed out in the comments that a calf fills that description quite nicely. I was reminded of how true that can be last night when we were finishing up milking. I walked around to the north side to see a new calf that was born yesterday morning. It hadn't stood up yet when I first saw it (actually Liz and I delivered it) and the kids wanted me to see how tall it was. (Tall, very tall...too bad it is a bull.)


Along the walkway an older black calf was tied. For a second it struck me...'I don't know who that calf is or why it is there, but that is a "Trixie" baby". You can't miss them, Trixie babies. The old cow sure stamped them and after all these years you can still see that strong, put-together look she passed along to her descendants.


Then I remembered that they moved calves night before last and that particular black calf is in fact Lucky. She is indeed from the Trixie family, and, despite the fact that Trixie herself died having Frieland LV Dixie, who died herself as an aged cow several years ago she has the look of her.


Liz and I tried this morning to count the generations that have passed since the boss bought Trixie for me as a Christmas present when we first knew one another. There was Trixie herself, dam of Emmie, dam of Ella, dam of Estimate, dam of Elendil, dam of Lucky.


Over twenty years have passed since we got her.... Mears Grand M Trixie.... at the Mears dispersal one cold miserable winter day. She gave me four daughters, Emmy (Woodbine Ellason), Melly (Shade-Acres Elevation Frosty), Fond Little Trixy (No-Na-Me Fond Matt), Dixie (Walebe Jewelmaker- a barn bull we owned) and one son, Frieland Patriot (Paclamar Bootmaker), that we used in the herd. Her last daughter won more ribbons than any other cow we have ever owned.

Today on a casual walk through the barn you can find Eland, Lucky, Elendil, England, E Train, Lakota, Dakota, Egrec, Encore, Cookie Crunch, Takala and Dixon descended through her daughters and Beausoleil, Bama Breeze, Bariolee, Volcano and Magma descended through her son.


To me that is truly a gift that has kept on giving. I only hope that twenty or so years from now, November will have offered Liz a similar list of good cows and great memories.

***November is by the bull Four-of-a-Kind Eland out of a Comestar Leader daughter Alan used to show and is half sister to Blink, the French fry calf.
I used to try to breed my cow, Frieland Profit Eland (out of Emu, out of Ella, out of Emmy, out of Trixie) to the Eland bull in order to get a calf I could name Frieland Eland Eland, which has a certain ring to it. Alas she only provided me with bulls from that cross.

Redneck Graduation Gift

Redneck window cling

And no, this is not on my car (although it does grace-or should I say disgrace-) a vehicle parked quite near mine.

A story

I was peacefully reading down the blog roll this morning, having arisen a lot earlier than I had any reason to, when I came across this on Jeffro's the Poor Farm and read it all without stopping.

These three links contain a story. I hope you have time to read it.

The Lawdog Files

A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver

Perspectives

If I didn't make it to your place, it is because I was reading this touching story about small town life...and loss.

Redneck chainsaw farm boy

Stormy weekend, windy Monday

I guess the worst is over, although the weekend mostly lived up to the weather fellas' dire predictions. Liz made it into school for her advanced ruminant nutrition final, although there were accidents everywhere. It isn't really all that hard to drive in this kind of snow, but you can't drive fast and careless, yakking on your cell phone and changing CDs. People have to try though.

The wind was wild last night. It shook the house (and this house is not easily shaken). This morning the sculpted snow drifts are scattered with box elder seeds. They cling much more tightly to their parent trrees than do the seeds of most members of the maple family, but last night's wild tumult freed them. Next spring the hardly, weedy, little trees will crop up everywhere. (I can't believe that the company that I linked to there actually SELLS them. It seems like selling dandelions. If you want a few thousand, just give me a shout next spring.)

The common winter birds are here in force. I sure didn't need to pish to call them out of the bushes Saturday (which is a good thing, since mostly the only thing that comes when I do is Gael). They wanted to fill up their tanks and practically mobbed me when I went out to fill their feeders. Today they are gleaning the brushy areas more than eating at the feeders. (Maybe they like box elder seeds.) Or maybe they just don't like the wind.


Hope you are warm. Hope the guys can get the hydraulic lines back on the spreader tractor (heifers pulled them off and everything is frozen-boss is not happy.) Hope summer is thinking of us down where it is hibernating.

Dan Fogelberg passed away

An incredibly talented man, who wrote and performed a number of my favorite songs, including Run for the Roses, Leader of the Band, Same Old Lang Syne, and so many other great ones. Prostate cancer claimed his life at only 56.

Farm vacations

People doing for fun what we do for a living.

Letter from college (to Liz)

CONGRATULATIONS! As the Bachelor of Technology 2007 graduate with the highest grade point average in the School of Agriculture and National Resources, you have been selected as the recipient of the December 2007 Commencement Academic Achievement Award.

Not bad at all

Herd health yesterday. A chance to talk with our favorite vet for a few, which is always a treat. (We share a lot of interests, such as birding, quiet times in the Adirondacks, and the health of the Northview cattle. If life wasn't so busy I'll bet we would talk more often.)

It was a great day for preg checks. Both Lizzie's top show cows are in calf, my lovely Beausoleil is bred to Straight-Pine Elevation Pete (YAY!), poor little Chicago finally caught, and Lily, down to her last chance before the one way trip to the auction barn, got lucky too. There are a number of others, Bubbles, E Train, Zinnia. Just a good morning all around.

Mandy is bred to Silky Cousteau. Blitzie is bred to Citation R Maple. We are breeding a lot of the first calf heifers to R Maple (who was big news many moons ago) because he throws smaller calves. Despite the fact that he was born in 1962 and by today's standards has a horrible proof we have never milked a bad daughter.) I was glad I had Alan's show cow, Bayberry checked, even though I knew she was open. She was in heat just a bit ago, but she had developed a cystic ovary and had to be treated yesterday. She went cystic last year too, and it took us months to get her bred. She is a big sweetie and I want her to have every chance to do well.

The best part of it the day was that when we were figuring up at the end we realized that two of the cows were bred by Liz back when the boss couldn't work because of his shoulder. She was only about three weeks into her AI course over at school and had to breed four cows. Three of them caught, but Hooter lost her calf a couple weeks ago. I think it is a tribute to her AI teacher that she did so well. (Just wanted to give credit where it is due after my diatribe the other day...he wasn't one of those guys.)


***Another ooh ahh bird sighting...the girls told me yesterday on the way over to the college that Tuesday night coming home from a late AI class they saw quite a sight. There were a bunch of little rodents, mice, voles or the like, in the middle of 30 A, down below the turn off for Corbin Hill where the state forest is. Just as they neared them, not one, but two snowy owls swooped down to grab a couple. Wow! I am so jealous. Odd for them to be hunting at night, but the weather was horrible...

Omen

I hope this morning is one for our luck on the Christmas bird count, which is coming up soon. The girls and I were walking over to the barn at about five minutes past needing a flashlight. We were traveling real slow and cautious as it is nasty icy under about four inches of mealy, slick new snow.

Just as we got about half way there this huge, ponderous, slow-flapping bird lumbered over the heifer barn roof, barely flopping along. I was hoping for an exotic owl of some sort until I saw the long, trailing legs. Of all things to see in December when everything but the river and the Schoharie are frozen-a great blue heron. I know almost exactly how low it was flying because it winged its way right past the tower on the house. That is 72 feet tall and the bird was halfway up the roof part, we'll call it 65 feet. What a strange sight for this time of year. We have counted only two on the Christmas bird count in all the many, many years we have done it. I am crossing my fingers that he flies up to the Mayfield South section of the Johnstown count and sits around waiting for us to drive by. We just love those "ooh, ahh" birds. (That is what you say when you see one.)

***Herd health today. Cross your fingers, if you will, for lots of pregnant cows.

How do you spell relief?

Headlights of the girls' truck coming up the icy driveway...home for the night.

Wood gathering

Southern style.

And northern style.

The boss cut this mostly dead apple tree down for me last week. Since we are expecting a major "snow event" in the next couple of days, I brought down all I could so it doesn't get covered with snow.

The lichens like it (click for closeup)

So do the cottontails

Now

'N later

This Problem has Legs

Because I simply must work on the Farm Side today...and because there are other irons tangling up the fire...I will share with you a math problem a friend sent us recently.

I didn't have a lot of time to spend on it, which is my excuse for not coming up with an answer. Ditto Liz. Becky didn't bother. However, Alan is like a pit bull when a problem intrigues him. He just works and works and works until he figures it out.

Which he did.

I'll bet all of you smarter than the average-type bear folks can too. Here it is.

Who can figure this out? (In school - this is called a story problem.)

There are 7 girls on a bus
Each girl has 7 backpacks
In each backpack, there are 7 big cats
For every big cat there are 7 little cats

Question: How many legs are there in the bus?

Actually, I just couldn't get past those backpacks...can you imagine the howling, and growling and yes, even caterwauling that went on within them? Glad I wasn't on that bus anyhow!

We never got rich and missed out on Disney World

Our Liz is about to graduate from college with a Bachelor of Technology degree. She has to finish an internship working on another farm and then she is done. Since she started college, four long and challenging years ago, she has wanted to come home and work into the family business with an eye to taking over. She has worked here on the farm since she was a toddler, including during all those years in college. (As have her siblings.) She has still maintained a spot on the Dean's List the whole time, as well as a membership in Phi Theta Cappa, and taken as many as 24 credits at a time.
Yeah, we're proud of her.


And yeah, we would love to have her come home to farm. (Any and all of the kids are welcome if they can work out a way to work together.) There have been plentiful times when we thought eagerly of retiring, but the place was kept afloat so we could take over and it only seems right to try to do the same for the next generation.


Wouldn't you think that the profs at an ag and tech school would be delighted to see her join us? Wouldn't you expect them to love to send young adults home to continue the family farm?
That is certainly what I expected.


However, for weeks, months even, Liz's teachers have been berating her for throwing her life and education away by coming home, especially since we are a small and not particularly outstanding farm. Discussion has become quite heated. All the many ways we might fail or she might fail have been pointed out. Her skill at breeding show cattle has been called into question (there have been several critters with the Frieland prefix that stood grand champion over the years-all of them hers). Her intelligence has been belittled. (That "dumb farmer" stereotype again). One teacher pointed out today that when she marries and has children she will want enough money to take them to Disney World and can't make it on a small farm.


And that, right there, just nailed me to the wall. Disney World! As if that were the gold standard of pleasure and achievement. The be-all-end-all epitome of American existence.

Although my folks ran an antique shop and book store when I was a young 'un, the boss comes from untold generations of farmers (we literally don't know how many). This farm itself is well over sixty years old and our kids are the third generation at this location. (The great grandparents had another farm on the other side of town.) We both grew up somewhat less than wealthy by conventional standards and never made it to Disney World. Can you imagine that? And then we went ahead and raised our kids the same way.

I know I should feel the depths of cultural deprivation over the Disney issue but actually I was perversely proud when Liz and Becky were in the lower grades and failed a test based on their cultural knowledge (they didn't know all the characters from the Little Mermaid or some other Disney flavor of the day movie.)


The boss and I both grew up showing at the county fair and thinking that was pretty big stuff. We have had visitors sneer at that, but darn, it really WAS fun. So we made sure our kids got to do it too.

When things got tight when they were small, instead of hopping on a plane for a warm climate and a theme park, we took "nature walk" mini vacations hiking around the farm. If one of us couldn't go their grandpa took them. They learned to recognize real birds and animals, to read tracks and know trees and plants. (Too bad about missing Minnie and Mickey, but they got to see robins and green frogs instead.) When we had time we took them hunting brachiopod fossils in Schoharie, digging Herkimer diamonds or hit the Old Stone Fort Museum or the NY State Museum. Or Blue Mountain Lake Museum. Or the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown. Poor deprived little things.

They missed out on jaded people dressed up as imaginary characters, and million-dollar thrill rides, and had to make do with piddly little tractor, horse and pick up truck rides (and cow rides sometimes). They had to suffer with just time with their folks and the grandparents...every day. However, they did get the chance to know that what they did every day mattered. Not only did their help mean a lot to us, but every time one of them picked up a shovel, taught a new calf to drink from a bucket, or drove the tractor out to rake hay they were helping feed the world.


To me, that stacks up pretty good against flying down to Disney World, but then I am not much of a sophisticate, so I could surely be wrong. And we certainly may fail, Liz or no Liz. Farming is tough stuff, no matter whether you have fifty cows or ten thousand. (The challenges are different, but I know I would much rather get up every morning and go out and milk our fifty than be the owner of a 10,000 cow place when the INS shows up and there is nobody left on the place to milk them at all.)


Anyhow, I personally can't wait until Liz is done with her education and home farming with us. If the farm fails, she has that degree to fall back on. If it succeeds, well, good, maybe she can afford to take her future children to Disney World.
If they even want to go.

Florida dairy closes

I thought that this story of a southern farm family's struggle to stay in the dairy industry was interesting.

How it went last year

Indoor lettuce

Seedlings

Indoor Lettuce

I planted a flower pot full today. Not much will make it to the table, as I can't walk past and not pick a leaf, but even a little is a wonder on a sandwich up here in the frozen north in the middle of the winter. I grew some in a cooler last year and we ate it for months. I use two mixes from Pinetree Garden seeds, winter lettuce mix and lettuce mix. I love the different shapes and colors of leaves that you end up with.

I am contemplating starting small flower pots of it and giving them as Christmas gifts to beloved folks who are impossible to shop for. Is this a good plan do you think?

Toots

Sorry about the not so great photo...the barn is dark and the flash doesn't make 'em look so great either.


A few more critter photos on the View today

Road trip

Just a short one...over to Altamont yesterday to pick up a beef we had processed. (Came out surprisingly good too, for an unfattened Holstein heifer).Roads were pretty bad, as it is really cold for so early in the year and spitting snow all the time.

We saw these Canada geese on the way home and stopped to take pictures. The silly things just walked away down the cornfield, even though I was quite close to them. Sure are a lot of them around for so late in the year. I see hundreds almost every day.




On the way home we ran along the river for a while. What a melting pot of water fowl lined the banks, littered the rocks and crowded every little left-over pool. Great black backed gulls, ring bills and herrings, millions of mallards, Canada geese, mergansers, plus hordes of crows. There were literally thousands of them.

Missing

Last week, against the wishes of certain people, (such as me and the girls) certain other people (who shall remain nameless) let the heifers back out on the hill. We had just gotten them in for Pete's sake, but they were tearing the wires off the tractor and getting in the way of feeding and barn cleaning. He brought them back down nights, but let them out days. Problem was there is a Jersey in the bunch who looks just like a deer (still deer season) and a springer that was ready to pop any day.

Of course the springer had her baby way out by the pond. And of course they couldn't bring her down because it couldn't walk and she was on the prod and yadda-yadda-yadda.

There are times you just keep your mouth shut and hope for the best, which, sadly, was not what we got.

Of course she came down without the baby. And of course when the kids and I went out to get it in off the icy fields it was gone. And of course there were calf tracks leading out of the pasture, through the fence, across two fields and down into a ravine. Of course they tapered off and vanished. Of course there were six sets of coyote tracks following them at a run, all the way from the cow pasture to the ravine. We let the mother out to look for it in case it was hidden, but she just wandered around mooing for it, with no luck at the actual finding part.

Alan kept taking relays of fresh flash lights out and tracking, but he just couldn't pick up the trail again where it disappeared in the ravine. He searched half the night to no avail. We looked for three days before we finally gave up and accepted that the coyotes must have taken it and dragged it away. They have gotten calves before, but I felt especially bad this time, because if only the mother had been left at the barn we could have gotten it in safely. Easily. I knew the boss felt bad too, although he would never say so, because if anybody mentioned it he just walked away.

Then night before last, I heard a little cry when I was walking over to milk. I couldn't tell if it came from the barn or down where the boss was down letting the heifers back into the barnyard from where they had been out on the hill. I thought to myself that it would be so wonderful if the baby had somehow survived and found the heifer herd, but I knew better. The last tracks were so far from the pasture, it had been three days, it is so cold and coyotes are so relentless.

I went in the barn and started setting up with a heavy heart. I just couldn't get the baby off my mind. The animals are our responsibility in this world and I can't help but take it seriously. Even though I had nothing to do with putting the mother back out in the field, I felt a deep guilt over it.

Then came the Christmas miracle. The boss walked in the door with a furry little black critter trotting at his heels. Somehow that baby had escaped the coyotes, found her way back across a good half mile of unfamiliar terrain, and followed the heifers to the barn. A little later she latched right onto a bottle of milk and wagged her tail with what looked to me like sheer joy at being warm and fed. She had never seen a person, but she just loved folks from that first second. She even climbed out of the pen where we put her so she could watch the boss work on the feed cart yesterday. He said she stood there right beside him staring at the motor he was working on, so close he could feel her breath on his hands. I guess he is forgiven, because if she can, she follows him like a dog.

We rarely keep Milking Shorthorn Holstein cross calves as we have a registered herd. However, the first thing the boss said, after I got over the tears of joy that she was found was, "She stays, she earned it."

Her name is Toots.

The ice one

Me zero

I was helping the boss drive the heifers out of the barnyard this morning, so the milk truck doesn't have to wait for the gate to be opened. I was carrying my empty coffee cup, four bags of wet cow washcloths and a fiber glass sorting stick. I took a step.
And crashed flat on my back on the icy hill, banging my head a good one and wrenching at least one arm. He said I was talking but my eyes were open and not looking like anyone was home.

All I can say is, the ice won. Bah.

It's senior picture time

Snow stories

This morning the boss and I got to regaling Alan with stories of winters we experienced as children and young adults. The years between the time I was about fifteen (and he nineteen) and the time I turned 28-ish included some staggering winters. There was a spell when I was living in one town and milking cows for a farm in another when the weather had to be experienced to be believed.

I had to be at work every day at five AM, so I left home around 4:30. That winter we had nearly a month when temps never got above twenty and at least a week of nights that reached thirty below. I drove a little Volkswagen station wagon sort of thing. It was an early example of front wheel drive and would go anywhere you pointed it. It was also a typical VW so the heater was dead. We used a little catalytic space heater to "warm" (warm being a relative term, resembling the comparison of scale of perhaps Vesuvius and a cigarette lighter, with "warm" being the lighter and comfortable being the volcano) it up and defrost the windows.


I would go out every morning at four or so and light the darned thing (with a match-it had an open, circular "wick" which was quite exposed), then go back inside for more coffee. If I propped it on the seat just so, it would sort of thaw a hole in the frost on the windshield so I could drive to work. It wasn't exactly ideal, but there isn't a lot of traffic at that time of day anyhow. I never missed a milking.

Then there was the blizzard that hit when I was living in the camp in Caroga Lake. (No insulation, one layer of simple board walls-it was a SUMMER camp after all). I don't remember exact weather statistics, but I probably was commuting to the same farm (I worked there a long time before I met the boss). During the night we got feet and feet and feet of snow, howling winds, temps way below zero...it was like living in Alaska. The little sheet steel wood stove in the living room (sole heat source) was a joke in the face of such weather. We didn't have running water though, so there was really nothing to freeze but us. Sometime during the maelstrom, while all occupants slumbered (including dogs) the front door of the cabin blew open. When we awoke in the morning we had to shovel two feet of snow out of the living room. (And you wonder why I refuse to get all excited about global warming.) At that point we accepted an invitation from some friends who had an apartment in the city and stayed with them for a few days.


The boss's stories of winter wildness included taking water upstairs at night so he could have a drink if he was thirsty and finding it frozen in the morning. Icy winds howling through the walls. Snow that the biggest tractor on the farm couldn't get into, let alone out of.


I have other memories of driving that same VW with that same stupid heater to that same job in an ice storm. There was simply no way the car could go on the roads themselves, which were like a long, black hockey rink. Still I had to go to work, as I loved my job and my employer's cows needed to be milked. So I put one tire on the snow bank and crept off to Johnstown where 150 Holsteins awaited. Never missed a milking then either.


We were nuts. We drove bad cars (I had one that you had to park on a hill to start and a truck with two leaky tires, which I swapped twice a day to get to and from work-I could change tires better then any girl I knew) and lived in frighteningly primative places. However, we were young, intrepid and didn't really know any better. And it was a real good preparation for marrying a dairy farmer. I fit right in from the day I got here.

C'mon fish, hold still for a second

Naughty

Kudzu


Or...could it be sunspots (or the lack thereof)

Meme from NYCO

This probably won't be much fun if you live down south, but NYCO cooked up a pretty good meme for those of us that live in the snowy regions.

Here it is, straight from NYCO with my answers below:

"Winter Questions:

I haven’t ever done the “blog meme” thing before (i.e., “Friday Five,” five questions that everyone is supposed to blog about on Friday - it’s a friendly way of getting blog traffic to circulate) but here’s some winter questions and answers. Feel free to tackle these questions on your own blog, and I will add a link to your post.

1. What’s the winter tool you can’t do without?

2. The winter tool you could do without (i.e., find unnecessary or silly)?

3. Your favorite music to listen to when stuck in the house in a snowstorm?

4. The winter sound you least like to hear?

5. Your driveway shoveling pattern: vertical (up and down)? horizontal (pushing from side to side)? Or any which way?"

Answers from Northview:

1) The Frothingham Free Library

2) Roof rake (our roof is about thirty feet high-at the bottom)

3) Emerson Drive, (of course)

4) The wind thumping and banging my bedroom wall and slapping the bird feeders around.

5) I hope and pray that my driveway is "shoveled" by a man with a skid steer. If not I rely on 4-wheel drive or hibernation.

Your turn-how do you handle the interminable days of winter?

***Update
Mrs. Mecomber and
Breezey have played too!
Loping Loubob as well!

Oh, kitchen, my kitchen

The fearful week (and four days) is done
Noses have weathered all attacks, the prize we sought is won
The smell is gone, the air is clear, and mama is exalting
While follow foods that are not tainted, the odor gone a faring

But heart, oh heart,
The grief that I have taken
While in the barn the kittens whine
Ousted from inside

Oh, kitchen, my kitchen, I am glad to have you back sir
Rise up, for you the cats evicted, for you the mom rejoicing

***to make things perfectly clear.....eleven days ago, Liz was given three cute (well two cute and one Hellcat) kittens by a dear friend of the family. They are more teen aged cats than kittens and for those long and miserable days they have lived in dog crates in my kitchen. Let me tell you, three cats in the kitchen smell...well, they smell real, real bad. No matter how often their little boxes are cleaned. Today they were exiled to their new home in the horse barn and I am a very happy camper. Very happy. Very, very happy.
However, Liz is not happy and thinks that I am mean as a box of rattlesnakes left on a hot sidewalk too long. Even so, it is nice to be able to breathe again.
(They only got to stay in as long as they did because the Hellcat one bit our friend and we needed to make sure she didn't have rabies.)

HT to Walt Whitman, who said it so much better.

Winter wonder-land (or why can't the calendar get it right?)

According to the calendar, winter arrives in this hemisphere on or somewhere around the 21st of December, close to the old Julian calendar solstice.


That same calendar is ALWAYS wrong and has been every single year of my life. Winter up here begins WAY before the 25th and ends when it gets good and ready. Believe it or not, we had frost the 8th of June this year, the latest I have ever seen. (There was ONE year, back when my brother was still in the service, when we had the oats planted by the end of March and all the fence built too, but it was such an aberation we are still talking about it.)


Wikipedia says this, "Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. Almost all English-language calendars, going by astronomy, state that winter begins on the winter solstice, and ends on the spring equinox. Calculated more by the weather, it begins and ends earlier and is the season with the shortest days and the lowest temperatures. Either way, it generally has cold weather and, especially in the higher latitudes, snow and ice."


Say what you will about Wikipedia, they got that one right. In fact, it looks as if winter is throwing its snow hook our way starting about noon today. (Oh, joy.) Not to mention its ice. Rain. Sleet. Freezing rain. High winds.


I think I will hibernate.


Or, alternately, I will betake myself off to the grocery store for some dog food as we are out, and have five (count 'em, five), bottomless canine consumers, warn up the homemade soup from last night's dinner for the human contingent and pray for school closings, which will send the company of helpful and entertaining young adults my way tomorrow.


***Stormy day update, file under unbelievable: the tank driver mentioned in the post below turned the dial on the bulk tank washer backwards AGAIN today and broke it (these things are like a washing machine dial and can't be turned backwards. He has been picking up milk for decades and knows better). Last time he did it it cost us six hundred bucks to fix. Eventually we got part of that paid for by the trucking company. I doubt we will get them to do anything this time. The boss is so mad he is fit to spit.

Troy Stanley or Lee Eisneberg

All afternoon yesterday we listened to the hostage drama at a Clinton campaign office in New Hampshire. (The girls called me as they were leaving college, or I wouldn't even have known about it as the boss and I were busy battening down the hatches.)

All afternoon yesterday Fox called the alleged perpetrator Troy Stanley. This morning when I sat down to read the news headlines they are calling the guy Lee Eisenberg.. So which was it? And did he really only have road flares? And who is Troy Stanley? Is he upset over the apparent misidentification? Or is one just an alias for the other? Just wondering.....

***Update, a commenter has answered these questions in the comment section.

Busy, busy

*The milking machines waiting to be washed after milking yesterday*

The various weathermen and women in the area seem to agree that it is going to get cold and storm over the next few days. Consensus is rare among them, so we are hustling around today getting ready. The boss is feeding the cows up right now; all the heifers are down from the hill and hanging around pestering him while he tries to work. I suspect that he wishes they were back out.

*The path to the orchard, made by Becky and Jack, but used by me in my woodquests*

I have been up in the old orchard gathering odds and ends of dry wood off the ground and from the old apple trees, which seem to shed dead branches like a dog sheds hair. A couple of wheelbarrows full of that stuff and the stove will really get cranking....and the kitchen will get nice and toasty. As soon as the cows are taken care of the boss is going out to get us some serious wood (as opposed to the frivolous little stuff I haul in with my trusty wheelbarrow). I am afraid we are going to need it.

*The wimpy wood I find*

It is a fine day for working outdoors, sunny...temps probably hitting the low forties. It doesn't really feel much like November, although there have been plenty of gloom and doom days to remind us of the season. Tomorrow however it is supposed to be much colder with northwest winds and snow...naturally, since, Liz is off on a school field trip to Ithaca tomorrow. Her class is going to tour the bull stud at Genex, which should be interesting. (In fact I am kind of jealous.) The boss and I went, or tried to go, to Sire Power down in Tunkhannock years ago, but we got lost, so it was closed by the time we got there. Oh, well, maybe some day.